Ibbani Tabbida Ileyali Is An Ode To The Many Flavours Of Love

THERE'S A FLEETING MOMENT IN TIME when the first rays of the morning sun light up the dew that studs a blade of grass. That light draws attention to the glistening drops of dew, but that light also causes the dew to disappear eventually. Love, for many people, is like that. It brings out the depth of one’s feelings and keeps one alive, but it can also render one unfeeling and dead to life.

In his debut feature Ibbani Tabbida Ileyali, Chandrajith Belliappa explores one such facet of love, choosing to allow the audience to not watch the proceedings on screen as a bystander, but experience an emotion as someone involved with the lives of Sid, Anahita and Radha.

This film defies classification — you can’t really call it a romantic drama or a philosophical romance — yet this film will grow on you, and tempt you to think and feel.

Each of the three leads is as different as people can get — Sid is hot-headed, quick to fight, quick to get hurt, but he also understands boundaries; Anahita is painfully shy, dresses way older than her age, sets her boundaries, vocalises her inhibitions, and seeks refuge in poetry; Radha is effervescent, willing to give love, willing to engage, willing to playful hold hands. There are hardly three scenes where Sid and Anahita share a relatively intimate physical space — even that has the scaffolding of distance.

Chandrajith also raises some important questions — what is love, can everyone move on, and when people don’t, how does it gnaw at them (through the taxi driver in Goa)… which is why this film is more an experience than a narrative. The writer-director nudges you to think along with the characters, keeping in mind their inhibitions, their hesitation, and their level of acceptance. But, at no stage does anyone want to see the person one loved suffer — they only want that they should have moved on. Such a relief in these terrible times when saying ‘no’ basically means putting your life at risk.

Sid is the kind of person who immediately takes flight when confronted with a health emergency before he finally comes around — he does that when his mother falls ill, he does that when he sees another loved one ill. But, he learns from his past mistakes. If he delayed the return during his mother’s time, this time around, he regroups quickly to get some precious time.

Anahita is someone who has a backstory featuring baby pigs to tell us why she has stopped crying. When she finally gets her release, it is an act of kindness that Sid bestows her with. This too, is love, I guess, nudging your love to weep her heart off, so that she can welcome the smiles.

As for Radha, she’s the girl who agrees to marry someone a decade older than her. She comes with her misgivings, but falls in love closer to her wedding date. She’s the girl who is never hungry when excited, but also the one who piles her plate and eats fighting tears when something terrible happens. Food is her comfort — be it hot bonda soup from the college canteen or the wedding feast served at a non-wedding. She’s the girl who goes to the hotel room that’s booked for the newly-married couple after she finds herself doing a Queen!

This is a film difficult to review without spoilers. It’s not to say there are twists or hooks that might take away from your viewing experience, but this film flows like a stream of delicate poetry, with some occasional bumps in the form of prose (the college portions did not quite work for me). The relationship tangles unfold like an onion, layer by pink layer, and leave you with some resolutions, more questions.

I’m very curious to see the script — because this is not really a talkie film, and it respects silences. How it manages to convey its idea is through the performances. And, Chandrajith extracts some lovely work from Vihan Gowda (Sid), Ankita Amar (Anahita) and Mayuri Nataraj (Radha). Their eyes convey so much. Vihan, especially, does vulnerability well. And, in one scene, Ankita’s eyes are almost like a frozen lake that’s defrosting. Uff! Mayuri’s eyes are the smiling-playful-combative sort — after all, she’s not really seen much in life for grief and doubt to enter her psyche. I wish we could have seen more of Mayuri, though.

Actor Girija Shettar (yes, the same person for whom we waited outside theatres for tickets to Mani Ratnam’s Gitanjali/Idhayathai Thirudadhaey) returns after a long gap to play Anahita’s supremely dignified mother, Madhumita.

At heart, Chandrajith is a poet, and it shows in the frames. There’s an ode to O Henry’s The Last Leaf, only this time it’s a drooping grape vine. But Chandrajith also pushes the envelope, and does so without making a big deal of it. There’s a reference to a football match, and it shows a crowded stadium, and the scene cuts to a women’s football match. At a time when women in sports don’t get the kind of hat-tip they deserve, this was gold!

The climax might seem a little cheesy for some, but when someone who has reduced herself and her physical space all her life needs to reclaim her life, what better space than a stadium! And what better thing to get inspired by than the now-iconic Cadbury’s ad of a girl dancing in the stadium.

Kudos to Rakshit Shetty for backing a film that refuses to get slotted, for being there for the last of his Rakshit and the Seven Odds writing team to turn a feature film director. Chandrajith showed similar flair in his short ‘Rainbow Land’ in Katha Sangama.

In Ibbani, Chandrajith is backed by some great technicians — cinematographer Srivathsan Selvarajan seamlessly straddles the different time periods, and almost makes you feel the mist and the wetness of dew. Editor Rakshit Kaup allows the frames to breathe because this film needs the luxury of time. Gagan Baderiya's background score respects silence and his songs have already become an earworm, and the hook steps by cinematographer Deekshith Kumar are already quite the rage on Instagram reels.

Ibbani calls for some introspection, some involvement. The payback is pure gold.